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Boutique stadium in wings

Charles Happell

Tenant clubs at Etihad Stadium need to draw crowds upwards of 20,000 to make money on home matches, and upwards of 30,000 to achieve meaningful revenue. Photo: Pat Scala

The AFL is examining plans to upgrade either Punt Road Oval or Princes Park as a boutique 25,000-seat stadium to help ease the financial burden on Victorian clubs hobbled by onerous Etihad Stadium deals.

The league has had preliminary plans drawn up as part of a feasibility study into both the Richmond and Carlton precincts.

In the Punt Road Oval plans, a footbridge would be built from Richmond train station over Brunton Avenue and Punt Road to the stadium. The attraction of the ground is its proximity to public transport and ease of parking at the MCG - where the AFL would not schedule clashing fixtures.

The Princes Park option would be less expensive because there is already capacity for 15,000 at the ground. It suffers, though, from lack of public transport access, apart from tram routes, and easy parking.

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North Melbourne's Arden Street ground has also been floated as an option but is even more remote, in terms of public transport and other infrastructure.

Either way, the AFL sees the third-ground option as a panacea for many of its problems and is pushing hard to get a deal done.

Having been frustrated in its attempts to buy back Etihad Stadium from its owners, and continually

held back by the financial problems of Victorian clubs such as the Western Bulldogs and North Melbourne, the league has taken the dramatic step of exploring this proposal to help redistribute some of its gate-taking revenue.

Tenant clubs at Etihad Stadium - including St Kilda, the Bulldogs and North - need to draw crowds upwards of 20,000 to avoid having to write the stadium owners a cheque, and upwards of 30,000 to achieve meaningful revenue.

An AFL-owned third stadium would end that kind of inequity.

Redevelopment of Punt Road or Princes Park would cost between $100 million and $150 million, and would be an all-seater stadium.

The proposal was brought up at a meeting of club chiefs in January and is sure to get another airing on Wednesday when the clubs meet with league executives, at which the contentious subject of equalisation funding will be addressed.

One senior Richmond official said: ''This idea of a boutique stadium will become a hot topic this year, a big-ticket item for the AFL. It will help solve many of the issues facing the competition.''

The one drawback to the Punt Road plan is the recent construction of the ME Bank Centre - home of Richmond's training and administration offices, as well as an Indigenous Youth Education Centre - and how that would fit into any redevelopment.

AFL Commission chairman Mike Fitzpatrick said the league was having difficulty persuading Etihad's owner, Melbourne Stadiums Ltd, to sell the stadium ahead of the official handover date of March 8, 2025.

If the league was able to broker such a deal - Melbourne Stadiums Ltd is asking $250 million for the remaining 12 years of the Etihad contract - then the need for the third stadium would become redundant. The AFL said it had no comment on the matter.